Field
At least some example embodiments of inventive concepts relate to semiconductor memory devices and/or methods of improving functions of memory devices by performing masked write operations in the memory devices.
Description of Conventional Art
A memory device having an error correction code (ECC) circuit may save error bits. The memory device may perform a masked write operation of masking data so as to suppress and/or prevent the data in a write operation from being written to some of memory cell blocks that constitute a memory cell array. By performing the masked write operation, some of the memory cell blocks, to which data is not written, retain previous data, and new data is written to the remaining memory cell blocks. During the masked write operation, an operation of reading the previous data, an operation of modifying parity bits with respect to the previous data and the new data via the ECC circuit, and an operation of writing the new data and the modified parity bits may be performed. In this regard, there is a demand for a memory device capable of more securely performing the masked write operation.